Lufthansa, Germany’s number one airline, said on Monday that its passenger numbers were down in April.

Lufthansa said in a statement it carried 8.586 million passengers in April, 2.0 percent fewer than during the same month last year.

At the same time, capacity edged up fractionally by 0.2 percent so that the so-called critical seat-load factor, which measures the number of seats filled on flights, slipped by 0.2 percentage points to 78.3 percent, the statement said.

Lufthansa — which also owns Austrian Airlines and SWISS — said the number of passengers on Lufthansa-only flights fell by 1.4 percent to 6.228 million last month.

Austrian Airlines passengers decreased by 6.4 percent to 922,000, while the number of passengers flying with SWISS was down 1.4 percent at 1.436 million.

The volume of freight transported by its Lufthansa Cargo unit slid by 2.0 percent to 138,000 tonnes last month, the statement added.

SOURCE AFP